The best werewolf names hide the wolf in plain sight. Remus Lupin in Harry Potter is the famous example: Lupin comes from lupus, Latin for wolf. This werewolf name generator uses real names from around Europe that mean wolf, from the Irish Faolan to the Swedish Ylva, and shows you what each one means.
Names that mean wolf
Wolves were admired and feared across Europe, so many old names were built on the word for wolf:
- Germanic and Norse: wulf or ulf appears in Rudolf (famous wolf), Ulric (wolf power) and Randolph (shield wolf), and on its own as Ulf.
- Irish: Faolan and Phelan both come from the Irish word for wolf.
- Slavic: Vuk is the Serbian and Croatian word for wolf.
- Hebrew and Yiddish: Zev and Velvel both mean wolf.
- Latin and Greek: Lupus and Lykos are simply the words for wolf.
Choose Name and its meaning to see each name's meaning next to it.
Where werewolves come from
The word lycanthropy comes from the Greek for wolf (lykos) and man (anthropos). In Greek myth, as Ovid tells it, King Lycaon served Zeus human flesh and was turned into a wolf as punishment.
Belief in werewolves was taken seriously in early modern Europe: in 1589 Peter Stumpp was tried and executed in Germany as a werewolf, and in France in the 1760s the killings by the Beast of Gévaudan were blamed by some on a werewolf.
Naming your werewolf
- Hide the wolf. A name that means wolf is a clue for readers who look it up, as Lupin was.
- Give them a pack. Werewolves in modern fiction often belong to a pack with its own name and territory.
- Think about the human name too. A werewolf lives most of the month as a person; Lowell or Ralph sounds ordinary until you know what it means.
For other creatures of the night, see the Vampire Name Generator.